Freshlyground insomniac

I seem to have some type of insomnia/waking up at sunrise/waking up at the slightest noise problem. The sun now rises at 5am: a little too early for my liking. Earlier during the year I was waking up between 6am and 7am, even though I set my alarm clock for 8am. I suppose stress and a lack of cardio exercise make the likelihood of getting a good night's sleep even less. Likewise with our dogs barking at odd hours and the rest of family waking up at 6am...

Last night we had intruders who helped themselves to the contents of my sister's car. I think they were disturbed while they were going thru my dad's microbus... either by one of the dogs or by my dad trying to get the dogs to shut up... not realising they were barking at criminals...

Social basketball evenings are over for the year, so I'm thinking of taking up running, though I really dont see myself doing any marathons or anything of that nature at this point in time. Wow... I haven't played ball in over 4 months :(

Firstly I need a decent pair of running shoes... I'm looking at anything from R500 for the cheapest pair of Adidas to R1300 for more pricey Nike's ($75 - $200US). Why do we get ripped off so badly in this country for name brands?

We played poker again last Saturday. I lost R32. Overall I'm still up R23. This time, 3 of the losers from last time were the winners this time. Thats how it goes I suppose...

We went to Kirstenbosch Gardens to see Freshlyground perform at the Appeltiser Summer Sunset concert on Sunday. The show was due to start at 5:30pm but as it turned out we had to sit behind the concert area because the 5000 people that got there before us left no room. Apparently 10,000 people in total were there that day. Traffic was backed up for quite a distance from Kirstenbosch. It was madness... I don't think I'll be doing that again in a hurry!
I should have taken a camera though, since the view of the mountain and vegetation below it is very cool I think.

B.Tech done!

I got my results today, finally after checking the website yesterday at different intervals and then this morning again, I was relieved to discover that I had passed my last 3 subjects! My marks were a pass-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth, a so-so-average-mark and a pretty-darn-good-mark. I am still considering giving the course head a piece of my mind about what I thought about the crappy manner in which the Info & Tech Management subject was run... culminating in 1 question, 100 marks for the test and again for the exam... well, I will try to forget that nightmare!

Oh, and try sitting in the seat with the highest amount of people traffic and invigilators that congregate within 2 metres of you to have their fat chats about different stuff.

On Tuesday I got roped into serving as a trustee for our body corporate. Currently we have 3 trustees. Seems none of us are too pleased with the developer.

I'm not staying in my place at the moment. My cousin and family needed a place to stay while they do some major rennovations to their house, also in Parklands. Hey, it's all good, its in the family!

December vacation is just around the corner, so I look forward to that.

Basketball tonight, it will be good to do some much needed running around and get the endorphins flowing. 4 months without any cardio exercise is really bad. Will likely feel it tomorrow, with every step I take!

16 days to go!

In the last 3 weeks there has been an Information & Technology Management test, a Software Engineering test, as well as my Software Engineering COCOMO II project and a group project for Project Management that have been due. The only test mark I’ve gotten back so far is for the Project Management test from 3 weeks back, but at least that was good news as I was pleasantly surprised with the highest mark in the class!

My essay results and the one mini-assignment result I got back were ok, but not great. At least for s/w enginerring my assignements were fairly marked. The same cannot be said for the marking of my ITM essays. I’ve given up on doing really well for ITM. If the lecturer doesn’t care about essays and tests being marked properly, why should I? It’s beyond my control…

It’s been fairly tiring with late nights, either due to lectures, studying or working on projects. Work work has been busier as well, but fortunately nothing near as hectic as it can get.

Lectures end next week, and then I write 3 exams in total, with Project Management on 14 November, Information & Technology Management on 18 November and last but not least Software Engineering on 21 November.

Then I’ll be finished with my B.Tech degree which means no more studying for this year!

If I’ve learnt anything from studying part-time, it’s the preciousness of spare time!

Calculators only!

The project management test yesterday went OK, fortunately it was open book and since I didn't finish getting thru the material, it proved handy being able to double check answers to questions that were a bit tricky. Since starting my B.Tech degree last year, this is the first open book test that I've written. It almost felt like cheating, though I could see that if one was completely clueless, one wouldn't be able to find some of the answers in the reference material.

We had the invigilator from hell watching over us. Asshole wasted 2 minutes of our time, first with getting us to sign a register during the test and second when he was yelling at a student for using his cell-phone as a calculator. He continued his tirade by shouting that it clearly stated on the front page of the paper that cell-phones were not be used as calculators... I had a look at my paper's front page, and didn't see such a warning, but then again maybe that student was writing a different subject. I don't think that shouting at students goes down well with them, especially when the person doing the shouting is old and white [relic of the apartheid era] and the majority of students are "black". Apartheid gave whites licence to treat non-whites anyhow they wanted... correction, it forced them to treat non-whites as second class citizens. Invariably some of them liked it that way.

Today, I need to get cracking on my COCOMOII software engineering project... from now until Monday morning, I will try to eat, breathe and sleep COCOMOII. Err.. we'll see how that goes.

Over and out ;)

Weddings, studying and black holes

7 weeks until the end of the semester and finals, then i finish my B.Tech degree!

Getting thru the next 7 weeks will be a challenge however. Tests, assignments and finals over this period is going to be rough.

The wedding 2 Saturdays back was great. Seeing two special people tie the knot and dedicating their lives to each other is always a momentous occasion. Congratz T & Ann!
I did manage to catch the garter with some help from a couple of eager mates wanting to thrust me into the spotlight! Thanks T for throwing it right into my hands! What do I do with it though? Is it meant to bring me luck :p

During the wedding weekend, I got to see lots of friends and family from out of town, so that was very cool too :) Unfortunately it had to all be compressed into 1 weekend :( By the time Monday morning rolled around I was seriously sleep deprived! I was a walking zombie that day..

I've moved all of the essentials and most comforts over to my new place in Parklands, but still have many things to sort out as well as traffic from that side of the world to contend with. Will have to see how it goes because I am finding that I cannot afford to spend so much time in traffic because that means I have even less time to study and do assignments. I don't think I've managed to do any actual work over the last month :(

With the new place there are still snags that the developer has to sort out, as well as certain bathroom fixtures that we need to buy. It seems a house is black hole for time and money!

Speaking of black holes, there was a very interesting documentary on Carte Blanche last Sunday regarding Stephen Hawking's new calculations regarding Black Hole Information Loss and the implications of it.

But wait, I digress... the next 3 weeks are going to tough for sure, nevermind the presence of black holes and their implications... I might very well need to ask for leave to study and do my assignments.

Wedding week

It's been a hectic week, with moving more stuff to the new house, setting up more curtains, organising a new suit for the upcoming wedding, grocery shopping for the bare essentials for the new place, getting things ready for my first guest staying the weekend for the upcoming wedding, juggling work and study committments (though not very well) and getting the car washed so that it looks respectable for the wedding.

Did manage to try my hand at Texas Hold 'Em poker at the pre-wedding evening last weekend, but had to leave early (relatively speaking) at 1:30am whilst in the chip leader position. I decided to leave my chips with the groom.

Edit: The game lasted until 4am with G taking first place. Thanks G for the donation. I will put it to use till next time...

Will be seeing a lot of old friends from Joburg this weekend at the wedding.

TGIF

Yay, it's the weekend, though I have a lot to do so it won't exactly be fun in the sun!

Happy birthday to Leesa Lees and Stephan today and Cybs on Wednesday past.

To Octavo and Ibis, have a safe and enjoyable trip to Singapore/Thailand!

Bank charges and RA's

Found an interesting blog, Consumer Corner's blog, and two interesting posts on it; one being an opinion on Retirement Annuities and the other being how we are ripped off by the South African banks in the form of exorbitant bank charges.

Kinda of related, FNB are now giving 0.25% p.a. on their Million a Month 32 day deposit accounts. Granted, it was never touted as an account that you are supposed to get interest on, but really now; 0.25% p.a. is practially nothing. FNB are scoring big time encouraging "investment" and not awarding decent interest on this account! It's a lottery disguised as investment.

I went to Tokai FNB earlier this week to close my money market account (again), which they finally managed this time round, and got them to reimburse me for charges incurred due to their incompetence.

Treading water

I feel as if I am barely managing to keep my head above water with the new wave of assignments crashing over me. We have a 1 week break from CPUT starting on 23 September and then class starts again on 3 October.

2 big assignments/projects towards the end of October, with semester tests around then too.

Finals in November...

Moving house this weekend, and a cousin and friend are getting married the week after on 1 October. Lots of friends from Joburg will be here that weekend.

I wish there were two of me! One to work like a dog and the other to do whatever I please!
:

Cannabilising your investments

Last night the asian guest lecturer from UWC spoke to us about Capital Investment, Program Management and Governance in the enterprises of today. He wants us to do some research on these topics since we'll be discussing them in more detail over the next few weeks. I find his lectures very interesting! He seems to know so much!

I watched a BBC documentary last night, about Reverend Sun Myung Moon. This man's vision is world domination, and he's trying to use his wealth (acquired from the blood, sweat and tears of his followers) to achieve this. As is the case for any respectable megalomaniac, he buys influence via politics and the media.

How can we help you?

Today, during my lunch hour, I went to FNB Tokai to close my money market account. My reasoning being that it seems silly to have a money market account when you have an a access bond or mortgage from which you can withdraw any excess funds that you might have paid into the bond over and above your monthly repayments. You are better off settling current debt unless your investments are likely to outperform whatever interest rate you are currently being charged for that debt.

So I ran this logic past the "consultant" just to check if there was any good reason for me to keep the money market account which costs me R20 per month. In a nutshell, she proceeded to explain how money invested at 5.5% p.a. in the money market account would be better than having it in my mortgage account where I am charged 8.5% p.a. in interest on the outstanding balance of my bond.

I then had to explain to her the flaw in her logic, but kept it short as possible as I realised there was no hope for her... So I asked what do I need to do to close the account, at which point I found out I could not close the account there since apparently one can only close an account at the branch where the account was opened. Funny, the telephone banking consultant I spoke to the other day neglected to mention that fact.

Thanks for wasting my lunch hour, FNB!

UPDATE: After phoning the branch where my account is held, I found out that it is possible to close an account from any branch.

See-thru eyelids

Today I came in to work, and noticed my colleague was reading the paper today, instead of vacantly staring at her monitor. Later on I realised that she was being very "still". Eventually, I noticed that it seemed like she was reading the paper with her eyes closed. This could be an amazing development in human evolution... perhaps I should notify New Scientist? They could do a feature on it!

As one of our project management assignments due today, we are supposed to hand in the Project Charter for the wedding project we have chosen to undertake. So far only one member of the group has submitted his version of the project charter. Unfortunately, his spelling and grammar could use some work, and he has no work experience (full time student), so his project charter is going to need some tweaking. Well, he gets an A for effort I suppose :p
Also, at this point, we seem to be lacking the bride to be's input. I'm sure that she would like to have her say as to what needs to be completed by when!

Believing in the stars

What's the deal with horoscopes and the like? Are they self-fulfilling prophecies if one believes in them or is it more than that?

A criticism I have heard levelled at horoscopes is that they are written in such a general fashion that there are elements in each one of them that applies to each and every individual, depending on how one interprets them. This is true for the majority of horoscopes that one might read. It is certainly difficult to measure the accuracy of predictions made. When horoscopes seem to be accurate, is it merely coincidence at work? Skeptics might say that gullible people believe what they want to believe...

We all need goals and objectives, and in the absence of defining them ourselves, perhaps horoscopes serve that purpose to those that believe in them?

The inherent danger is: what if your 'compass' is some hokey horoscope columnist making a living from the misplaced faith of others?

When are local elections?

Been feeling pretty crummy today... don't know if it's general stress or food poisoning or whether it's this flu having its final say.

[My bad, i previously thought today was voting day...] Tony Leon (The DA’s Registration Drive) tells us it's important to vote but how many of us actually know what we are voting for. I'm sure we all want service delivery from local and national government, but in a way, it just comes down to blind faith for the majority of voters. Blind faith that the people we vote for will do their utmost to make a difference.

My software engineering class was cancelled last night, the lecturer didn't pitch... should have taken the opportunity to get make some progress on my essay, but somehow the time just evaporated with all the other things going on last night... I think my pc and my sister's pc's are possessed by gremlins... so much time wasted on software and hardware problems over this past month. 6 days left to research and write this damn essay...

I was listening to songs from the 80's on my iPod today, and somehow it made the dreary half of this day more bearable.

Tonight we had an asian american guest lecturer (from UWC) speak to us about enterprise architecture. Fortunately, that was the topic of our last essay... though you wouldn't say so based on how un-responsive we were when it came to giving him feedback on our grasp of the subject!!!

Sad weekend

I watched 2 particulary poignant movies on TV this past weekend. The first was
Rosewood and the second was Awakenings.

In the case of Rosewood, it's very sad what African Americans had to endure, even once they were "free" from slavery. I guess racism is an ugly fact of human history. Look no further than our own country.

We spent the second half of Sunday moving a fridge and bed thru to my new place, as well as going thru the snaglist to see what has been fixed. As it turns out, the developer's claims that everything has been seen to are once again untrue.

We should be getting the burglar bars installed this week. We can't wait any longer for them to finish fixing snags before we do what we need to do to make the place secure.

I have a blog

Yay, I have a blog, finally thanks to the inspiration from Octavo and Ibis!

Right now am trying to recover from being severely run-down due to the stresses of the past few weeks. Also that pesky flu which I succumbed to is almost gone now...

Over the next two weeks I need to get my life in order... have a software engineering essay to write, need to get to grips with Informix, ODBC, and .NET issues at work and need to get my new house sorted out.

I will try to stop playing GTASA all together over this period... this might be impossible because I might have to run it to do some "performance" testing on my pc!

Some of the entities that have caused me varying levels of grief lately have been RE/MAX Tableview, New Age Property Developers, FNB, OUTsurance & Sanlam. So far (I am working on the others) only FNB and OUTsurance have made me happy in their bids for good customer relations. Unfortunately it usually takes a manager to sort out the more tricky issues, but I guess that's what they are there for!

Cheers for now!